The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

A Kurdish militia in northern
Syria plans to become autonomous from Damascus in the coming days, after
months of administering the border territory without Assad forces,
Turkish media reported on Wednesday.

According to the reports, the Kurdish
Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affiliate of the PKK terrorist
group, announced that it planned to declare autonomy from Syrian
government control on July 19, and three months thereafter hold a
constitutional referendum. The PYD was said to have met with each of the
10 Kurdish parties operating in northern Syria to discuss the matter,
and received popular, but not unanimous, support.

Ilham Ahmed, a member of the Kurdish Supreme Committee,
was quoted by Kurdish Hawar News as saying that the intention was not
to secede from Syria, but rather to allow ethnic administration of
Kurdish areas and thereby set an example for the rest of the country.

Kurds inhabit the northern region of Syria
bordering Turkey and Iraq, and constitute approximately nine percent of
the country’s 22.5 million residents. For nearly a year, Kurdish flags
have flown over northern Syrian cities after President Bashar Assad’s
forces withdrew. Last summer residents of Kobani, a predominantly
Kurdish city located near the Turkish border, stormed the local security
headquarters and raised the Kurdish national flag at municipal
buildings.

According to a recent AP report, vehicles
sporting license plates reading “Rojava Kurdistan,” or “western
Kurdistan,” have become more common. Kurdish red, green and white flags
with a sun in the middle — the same flag flown in Iraqi Kurdistan —
billow over homes and public offices. A local police force known as
“Asayish,” whose members include women, has taken over security in the
areas abandoned last year by Assad’s forces.

The PYD’s declaration of autonomy came amid
reports of intense clashes between the Kurdish group and the al-Qaeda
affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in the northeastern city of Ras
al-Ayn. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the
clashes took place approximately 200 meters from the Turkish border
crossing.

Stray cross-border fire from the battle in Ras
al-Ayn late Tuesday night killed one and injured two in the neighboring
Turkish city of Ceylanpinar, according to Reuters. A Turkish official told AP, however, that one teen died and two were injured.

According to Today’s Zaman reporter Mahir
Zeynalov, the Turkish military responded to the cross-border fire with
warning shots of its own, striking targets across the border in Syria.

A PYD
spokesperson told Radio Sawa anchor Zaid Benjamin that “Islamist
brigades started the provocations in Ras al-Ayn and the other Kurdish
areas” and that the battles against them was ”our chance to root out the
Islamists from the Kurdish areas.

Despite the brief flare up on the Syria-Turkey border, there is little chance of a major escalation by Ankara, Aaron Stein, PhD candidate and a researcher at the Istanbul-based Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies.

“Ankara has tightly circumscribed rules of
engagement regarding its military action in Syria,” he said. “If there
continues to be a spillover of violence, Ankara has tended to respond
with retaliatory artillery strikes.”

“However, the current dynamic on the border
raises questions about potential targets,” he said, noting that Turkey’s
backing of Free Syrian Army rebels in their fight against Assad, and
the Syrian army’s retreat from the border region, inadvertently created a
pocket in which the PYD could form an autonomous region.

Jabhat al-Nusra also reportedly bombed the PYD
headquarters in the nearby Kurdish city of Qamishli, also situated on
the Syria-Turkey border.

Activists in northeast Syria also reported additional fighting between Kurdish and Islamist groups elsewhere in Hasaka province, near the Iraqi and Turkish borders.

PYD activists claimed as many as 11 Jabhat
al-Nusra fighters were killed in the battles, but their reports couldn’t
be independently verified.